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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29119929">i flashed from the genesis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet'>nebulousviolet</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bittersweet, F/F, Image Issues, Internalised Homophobia, Post canon, Slight Canon Divergence, introspective, otto malpense (derogatory), shelby is an la girl fight me!!!, swimming pools as a metaphor, wlw shelby trinity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:08:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,084</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29119929</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I already have friends,” Shelby says. She leaves out the part where she hasn’t tried to get back in touch with them since she graduated a week ago. They’re sitting outside today; the sky is still a novelty, as is fresh air and wind. “We were allowed to make friends, you know that, right?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Laura Brand/Shelby Trinity (onesided), Lucia Sinistre | Lucy Dexter/Shelby Trinity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i flashed from the genesis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title taken from 4 morant which is a song i associate a lot with my version of shelby (who is not really canon shelby.....but still)<br/>there are parts of this which are deliberately very vague because imo canon shelby is a nebulous figure whose backstory and POV of certain key events are just. ignored. HOWEVER the way i wrote this had very specific intent in places, hence a teen rating that i recognise is probably not entirely justified when reading this as an outsider but it is what it is!<br/>as usual, the timeline follows my big hive timeline masterpost and not canon as walden sees it, i referenced some of my other shelby fics (namely my belief that shelby went to boarding school, is an LA girl, and her parents are divorced with her mom unable to have custody) and i took some creative liberties with characterisation and what happens at graduation...however! i did actually try to reference canon here! specifically dreadnought. so go me x</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>“This is a crime against humanity,” Otto said, with all the seriousness of someone accustomed to such things. Next to him, Laura looked equally pained. “That can’t taste good.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s fantastic,” Shelby said. “You should try it.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“Looking at the crumbs is making me feel sick,” Laura groaned.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Then don’t look,” Shelby advised. She dipped the crust of her toast into her strawberry yoghurt with another decadent swirl, and then brandished it at them; Otto physically recoiled. “Haters gonna hate.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“The haters are hating because this is a hate crime,” Laura said. “Against breakfast.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“Against food as a whole,” Otto doubled down.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nobody’s making you eat it,” Wing said mildly, ever the peacemaker. Shelby beamed. “It may not personally appeal to me, but-”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <span>“Shelby?’’</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The yoghurt pot slips from between Shelby’s fingers and crashes onto the tiled kitchen floor. She thinks her shoulders might be shaking.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sorry,” her dad says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“You didn’t,” Shelby mutters. It’s not a lie; Shelby has never been scared of her father, only resentful. She was just - startled, that’s all. She startles easy, these days; it’s going to be a very long time before she goes back to jewel heists and hiding in the Louvre. “I really hate this brand of yoghurt.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>She wishes she’d thought to ask what kind Nero has shipped to H.I.V.E before she left. She didn’t really plan ahead for graduation; Laura applied to Oxford, and Wing discovered religion (or spiritualism or - something; he hadn’t been very specific, and she’d sort of been avoiding him towards the end), and Otto argued, pleaded, and blackmailed his way into a G.L.O.V.E assignment, but Shelby had been somewhere else. Denial, mostly. She remembers she got into a screaming match with Otto about it, their worst in years, and then cried in front of Lucy’s memorial pillar for half an hour. Part of her thinks she didn’t believe she’d ever live long enough to leave until she was standing on the graduation stage with an envelope full of forged examination results and high school transcript in her hand, and another part of her thinks she knew but couldn’t bring herself to consider anything else.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I can cook you something,” her dad offers, which is one hell of a surprise. Shelby doesn’t think her dad has cooked anything, ever. Definitely not for </span>
  <em>
    <span>her, </span>
  </em>
  <span>at least. She sort of thought he packed her off to so many boarding schools to get out of doing exactly that. “There’s bacon in the refrigerator.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I’m a vegetarian,” Shelby snaps. The vitriol, some distant part of her thinks, isn’t entirely warranted. Shelby shed her old self like a second skin at H.I.V.E., gave up meat and wore her hair up and pierced her nose with a needle and a spare earring; she turned herself into a shapeshifter with her own name and face but little else. She did it on purpose, of course - Shelby very rarely does anything by </span>
  <em>
    <span>chance </span>
  </em>
  <span>- but. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her father doesn’t say anything. Maybe she should turn around, look him in the eye. If Shelby were a little more willing to undergo anything remotely resembling introspection, she’d think about why she’s been so adamant about refusing to examine his face for more than a few seconds. But she’s never been that kind of girl. She stares at the yoghurt on the floor, thinks about stomping on it until the little plastic carton bursts, and then her dad says, “We could go out. There’s this vegan place down the street.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>There’s a moment where she considers arguing for the sake of it, picking a fight because she’s familiar with that, but she comes to her senses. She’s not thirteen anymore. Shelby shrugs, picks the yoghurt pot up, and says, “Fine.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Don’t you miss it?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Miss what?”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Lucy shrugged. “You know, dressing up,” she said. “Makeup. Clothes. Knowing that what you looked like mattered. That anything mattered.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Shelby let her head fall back onto her pillow. “It’s really fucking depressing when you put it like that.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“Sorry,” Lucy said. Shelby could hear her picking at her nails from where she was sitting at the end of Shelbys bed. “I guess you and Laura are probably used to it by now.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t know,” Shelby said, more to herself than to Lucy. “We don’t really talk about that stuff. About who we used to be - before. I don’t even know how she got here.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“You don’t?” Lucy echoed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It’s not something I think she’s proud of,” Shelby said. “She always just changed the subject, or turned it around on me. And then at some point I guess it stopped mattering. We’re here now, right?”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah,” Lucy said. She sighed heavily. “We’re here.”</span>
  </em>
  <span><br/>
<br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m taking a month off work.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>He ambushes Shelby with the news when she has half a pancake in her mouth, presumably to stop her from giving an immediate retort, but all it does is make her choke. She forces herself to swallow, takes a big swig of orange juice, and says, “Why would you do that? You don’t have to do that.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“It’s been six years,” her dad says. “You’ve grown up. I missed all of that.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“You were going to miss it anyway,” Shelby says. When she looks up from her plate, he has the audacity to look hurt. “You know I’m right. If they hadn’t taken me, you would’ve sent me to a finishing school in Geneva. I found the pamphlets.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She remembers finding them, a week before she woke up in a helicopter; she remembers scrambling for a wall to put up between herself and these strangers and saying </span>
  <em>
    <span>the best school money could buy </span>
  </em>
  <span>while thinking about ski slopes and trips home only once a year. Like an all-girls’ Montessori in Sacramento wasn’t far enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It was an option,” he says lamely, like Shelby ever had a choice in any of the schools he sent her to before she was sent to H.I.V.E. “Look, Shel, this is exactly why I need this time off. We need to work through this stuff.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Maybe I don’t want to work through it,” Shelby says. She stabs the other half of her pancake vehemently. “I’m - jet lagged, and none of my clothes fit me right, and they’re all out of style anyway because they’re six years old, and it feels like I’ve been living in this crazy parallel universe for as long as I can remember. Soothing your bruised ego doesn’t even register on my to-do list right now, okay?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” he says. Soothing, placating, like she’s some wild animal - and she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she’s just frustrated and tense and wearing a too-tight t-shirt she vividly remembers getting for her twelfth birthday. For the first time in years she’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>lonely. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She doesn’t remember being this lonely before. “I can take you shopping. Get you some new clothes.”</span>
  <span><br/>
<br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The clothes are hardly the worst thing about coming home. It’s the fact that when she gets to the mall, she won’t know what she wants; she doesn’t know what’s in fashion, what suits her, what her size is. It seems to matter so much now, when a few days ago it didn’t matter at all. Shelby shrugs, scratches the scar on her wrist from being shoved off a platform during a training exercise with Otto in third year. “Cool,” she says. She thinks about black jumpsuits and nail polish made with Sharpie. “Thanks.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’d forgotten what it was like, to deflect all the time. She was so sure that that’s what she was doing at H.I.V.E, but now she knows that can’t be right. She was more open than this, at least; she whispered secrets to Laura when she knew her roommate couldn't see the vulnerability on her face, prayed to a God she had never believed in when she returned to H.I.V.E as the only girl in her year’s Alpha stream. Here she is, back at square one anyway.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m doing my best for you,” he says. “I know I wasn’t before, but I’m doing it now.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The restaurant is beginning to get busy with the brunch crowd. Her brain goes straight to snipers, an old habit.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Laura and Otto, huh?” Lucy said. The air smelled like chlorine, sticky and humid; the water polo boys were standing on the side of the pool down below, their shoulder blades glossy and shining with rivulets of water underneath the fluorescent lights. When Shelby looked up at her friend’s face, it was remarkably even. “You could’ve told me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It wasn’t official,” Shelby said. She thought of being freshly-turned fifteen and watching Laura kiss Otto on the mouth and turning her own head away to laugh. It had been funny at the time. She wasn’t sure why she’d laughed when she sort of felt like crying. “It’s still not. They both really suck at talking about feelings.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“Can I ask you something?” Lucy blurted out. Her hair had fallen over her face, in that cliche way seen in movies and TV shows - God, what did Shelby know about pop culture anymore? All of her references were nearly four years out of date - but Shelby was almost glad. She thought Lucy’s face might have that horrifically earnest expression she wore whenever she was about to say something that popped Shelby’s bubble, and she didn’t want to face it. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sure,” Shelby said. “This match blows anyway.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You and Laura,” Lucy began, and then she trailed off, like she couldn’t bring herself to say it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Me and Laura,” Shelby confirmed. She shifted in her seat and stared down at the water. “But mostly just me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“There’s some community colleges you should look at.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I don’t want to go to college.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“You could make some friends.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I already have friends,” Shelby says. She leaves out the part where she hasn’t tried to get back in touch with them since she graduated a week ago. They’re sitting outside today; the sky is still a novelty, as is fresh air and wind. “We were allowed to make friends, you know that, right?”</span>
  <span><br/>
<br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know anything, apparently,” her dad says. He’s smoking - the smell of tobacco is making her feel faintly ill, but she’s perversely proud of how his perfect mask is beginning to slip, how she’s getting under his skin again. She is too old to do this. Still. “You won’t tell me.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“You won’t ask,” Shelby fires back. He has a month off work, yes, but it means little  - they eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, make stilted small talk over groceries and making appointments at the hair salon, but that’s it. There’s an elephant in the room; the elephant is </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He must know. He must know, she thinks, what she did to get sent to a school for villains - that the criminal mastermind he tutted at while reading the New Yorker and telling his assistant to make arrangements for Shelby’s mother to spend another six months at a rehab facility on the East Coast was his </span>
  <em>
    <span>daughter</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She wonders if </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>wonders, if he knows she knows how to put together and fire a gun in ten seconds flat, if he knows she knows the quickest way to kill a man in any given situation and how to manufacture a rigged election and how to steal a billion dollars without any of the world’s top banks noticing. She likes the idea that she could scare him. That, for the first time in her life, he knows she holds the cards, that she’s been playing him all along.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His mouth twists and then flattens into a thin line. She sees her face in his. “I didn’t want to upset you,” he says. “Is that so hard to believe?”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I’m not upset,” she snaps. She bites her lip so hard she feels her teeth puncture the skin. “It was school. I went to class. I wore a uniform. I did homework. I hung out with people.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Did you like it?” her father asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess,” Shelby says. She pushes her salad around with her fork, shrugs her jacket off her shoulders; LA is warm even in September, and her hair is sticking to the back of her neck. “I was happier there than I was here, anyway.”</span>
  <span><br/>
<br/>
</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks he flinches. But she’s remembering Laura scrawling her parents’ home number on her ankle in permanent marker, laying awake listening for the click of a wardrobe, teaching herself chess by watching Otto play in the library. Funny, how she doesn’t remember any of the girls she went to middle school with, but can recount the exact moment she first saw Lucy Dexter. Funny, how she thought she could come back here and expect her two lives to remain totally separate.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You don’t mean that,” he shakes his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dad,” she says. It’s the first time she’s called him that since she came home. “Since when have I ever been a good liar?”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Thirteen straight rounds,” Laura said in awe. “You have to be cheating.”</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>“I would never,” Shelby batted her lashes. “Me?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You should’ve counted cards instead of stealing jewels,” Otto said. It almost sounded like a compliment.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Where’s the fun in that?” Lucy demanded, and Shelby beamed, thrilled at the sensation of being understood. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s so weird,” Laura is saying. Her voice sounds crackly, and maybe Shelby’s imagining it, but her Scottish accent seems stronger than when she heard it last. “I was so used to falling asleep to you snoring.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I do not snore!” Shelby laughs, outraged. She’s sitting on the edge of the pool in a one piece; she’d reached for a bikini at the mall, and then remembered the scars on her abdomen, a souvenir from storming the Glasshouse, and quietly shuffled down the aisle. Soon it will be fall, and then her twentieth birthday. Twenty. It sounds so old; it sounds like a definitive ending. As if once she’s no longer a teenager, she is someone else entirely - a bona fide adult. “Take that back right now.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Or what, Shel?” Laura grins. Her smile is audible even several thousand miles away. “You’re gonna fly over here and challenge me to a duel? Likely.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Suddenly her voice is hollow.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Shelby says, “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” It’s not as light-hearted as she wishes it was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Have you heard from Otto?” Laura clears her throat. She’s always been good at avoiding difficult things; the day Lucy died, she cried non-stop for half an hour and then never spoke about it again. The day she returned from the Glasshouse, she gave a thirty second recap and then made a programming joke. Maybe, Shelby thinks, they were never really that different in the first place. Opposites attracting has always sounded like bullshit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Shelby admits, swishes her legs in the water and watches the sunlight dance off of the broken surface. “Have you?”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Not yet,” Laura says. There’s a long silence. She says, finally, “He’s going to get himself killed at this rate.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Probably,” Shelby agrees. She wants to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>he got Lucy killed</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but that’s spiteful and mean-spirited and not even true, according to the heavily-censored report Raven gave her, so. She can be contrary all she wants, but she’s not stupid. She might be mad at Otto now, but it’ll pass, because with Otto she’s never been able to hold a grudge to save her life. “He’s psychologically incapable of leaving things alone.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Says you,” Laura quips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” she says. “Says me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s that argument with Otto again, the one they had before graduation. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Just admit it. It wasn’t my grades you were jealous of.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>It’s Nigel coming up to her on the Leviathan and saying, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“This isn’t fair to him. You know it isn’t fair.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>It’s Lucy sitting on Laura’s bed while Laura’s at code club, straightening her collar and saying, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m still glad we tried it.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s one thing, Shelby thinks, to fall in love with your straight best friend. It’s another thing to do it twice. And it’s really fucking humiliating for both of them to choose the same guy over you, consciously or not, when even the boy you dated out of some kind of one-sided obligation liked Otto at some point. Her life is a joke. It doesn’t mean Otto should’ve spelled out the punchline for her, though. Maybe she’s still mad at him after all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You should come over for my birthday,” Shelby says. “My dad’ll pay the airfare.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Okay,” Laura says easily. “Hey, I’m really sorry about you and Wing. I know I should’ve been there for you more after the breakup, but I was so busy filling in my UCAS form-”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Don’t worry about it,” Shelby says. “It was totally amicable.” So amicable that she hadn’t been the one doing the dumping. So amicable that she’d started out angry and finished up crying into Wing’s shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you say so,” Laura says. She sounds unsure. “Listen-”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Do you mind if I call you back?” Shelby asks. “I gotta go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, of course,” Laura replies, thrown. “I’ll talk to you later, then. Bye.”</span>
  <span></span><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Shelby pulls her legs up onto the poolside, observes the mid-afternoon sun. The sky is the precise colour of the Henchman stream’s uniforms. There has to be a point, she thinks, when she stops comparing everything to her school years - when she hears Nero and thinks of the emperor, when a raven is a bird and not a woman, when she stops having the urge to add ‘Alpha stream’ after her signature. And logically she knows that it’s not all or nothing; she doesn’t have to be Laura, desperately clawing after a normal teenage experience she never got to have, or Otto, going as deep into the criminal underworld as humanly possible. She can be the Wraith, and Shelby, and an alumnus of the world’s first school for villains all at once. Logically, she knows that if she keeps stripping parts of herself away whenever they’re inconvenient, there’s going to be nothing left. But, historically, she’s not great at admitting she’s wrong. It is one of the things she always thought would come with age, but never did.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her shoulders are beginning to burn. She hasn’t had a sunburn in so long. She doesn’t reach for the sunscreen. Instead, she tilts her head back, and wonders if it’s too late to apply to USC.</span>
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